About CIBC | History | External Advisory Board

The NIH Center for Bioelectric Field Modeling, Simulation, and Visualization officially began operations on September 15, 1999. During the first five years, the Center focused on creating an extensible, scalable, scientific problem-solving environment and on developing corresponding research to solve real-world bioelectric field problems. To accomplish this goal, we conducted research and development in advanced modeling, simulation, and visualization methods for solving bioelectric field problems and also created BioPSE, a modular, extensible, integrated software problem-solving environment for bioelectric field problems. The BioPSE software system supports interaction among the modeling, computation, and visualization phases of bioelectric field simulation.

The structure of BioPSE derives from dataflow programs originally developed for visualization and represents a new approach to addressing the much broader range of computation needs in biomedical research. We imagined BioPSE as a "computational workbench" in which a user selects tools (software modules) from a set of drawers (categories) and connects them to create a workflow (a network) that performs all the necessary steps. Each tool has different settings by which a researcher may adjust it to the specific task or object at hand. Such flexibility means that a researcher may even keep multiple copies of a particular tool, each with a different purpose and setting. Just as a skilled craftsman may design and fabricate new tools when the complexity of the task so requires, a skilled developer of BioPSE workflows may develop new software modules (or consolidate existing ones into "meta-modules") and thus add infinitely to the capabilities of the system.

After successfully releasing BioPSE we began to learn from researchers how they were using the software and what additional capabilities they required. While many researchers were using BioPSE for computational bioelectric-field research, even more were using it for other biomedical applications. We proposed new approaches to reduce the complexity of the BioPSE interface in order to expand our user base and impact. By 2004 we had created easy-to-use, application-specific software programs based upon BioPSE. We called these programs "PowerApps".

Ultimately, we felt that good tools should be used, and modified, by the people who need them, rather than the people who designed them. Thus, biomedical scientists should be able to adopt BioPSE and adapt it themselves, to suit their own needs, without relying on specialized computer programmers.

Thousands of users have downloaded the BioPSE software and used it in their bioelectric field research. Their topics of investigation include cardiac electro-mechanical simulation, ECG and EEG forward and inverse calculations, modeling of deep brain stimulation, EMG calculation, and determination of the electrical conductivity of anisotropic heart tissue among a number of other areas. For example, many users have employed our BioTensor application for visualizing diffusion-weighted MRI images of the heart and brain. Users have also employed BioPSE for the visualization of breast tumor brachytherapy, computer aided surgery, teaching, and even a number of non-biomedical applications.